Economic Crises Foster the Next Breakthroughs

Governments and central banks are pulling out all the stops in fiscal and monetary policy to avert a second Great Depression. They think the economy should run like a machine with 4% growth a year, 2% inflation and 5% unemployment.

They’re idiots.

As I explained last Tuesday (The Biggest Mistake Ever Made), our economy is dynamic, organic. It’s like our bodies. It needs cycles of growth and slowing.

New innovations develop out of times of challenge and recessions. And we rapidly adopt such innovations during the nurturing times of growth.

My wife is a psychologist and she says it best…

She tells those of her clients who are going through emotional crises that breakthroughs come from breakdowns. “So, don’t fight the breakdown or crisis,” she says. “See it instead as a gift in disguise!”

The same is true of our economy. We need economic crises and breakdowns to foster the next breakthroughs in technologies and business organizations. In turn, these breakthroughs create another wave of productivity that makes the next generation and economy richer than the last.

The greatest and most radical innovations do not come in boom periods they come in downturns. Think about it. The TV, the A-bomb, jet engines, the computer, radar, many new electrical appliances and so on came into existence during the Great Depression and World War II.

They came in times of crisis, breakdown and challenge… not in good times.

In the boom that followed, all of those new innovations moved mainstream and changed our standard of living massively.

The same occurred in the last economic crisis from 1969 through 1982. The microchip, personal computers, operating systems like Apple and Microsoft, cell phones, time-share computing (which evolved into the Internet), discount brokerage, cable TV, big box discount stores and so on.

Those things emerged in a challenging high inflation, recessionary economy. Then they spread rapidly into mainstream adoption in the boom from 1983 through 2007, again, changing our standard of living massively.

Individuals, companies, political institutions and all organisms get increasingly comfortable, less innovative and attached to the technologies and structures that emerged over their life cycle. So it is absolutely necessary that such technologies and institutions – and ways of living and doing business – start to break down when their markets and life cycles mature and when the economy naturally slows down.

This “disintegration” causes people to become increasingly dissatisfied with how things are working. And the more dissatisfied they are, the more willing they are to throw such past innovations out and to innovate new ones.

It’s the same reason that real leaders like Churchill or Lincoln emerge only in crises… when even everyday folks get focused and clear-sighted… Because the situation empowers them to act without hesitation or fear.

When the barn is burning down, people rush in and save the child or horse. They become heroes. They don’t form a supply chain and feed hay and kindling to the fire.

So listen up central bankers and politicians: fighting this debt crisis with endless “crack” (aka quantitative easing) is not just bad economic policy… it’s sheer lunacy. It could kill innovation here in the U.S., as it has already done in Japan and southern Europe.

We don’t need more stimulus in our economy. If we have any hope of enjoying greatness once more, we first have to breakdown.

About Author

Harry studied economics in college in the ’70s, but found it vague and inconclusive. He became so disillusioned by the state of the profession that he turned his back on it. Instead, he threw himself into the burgeoning New Science of Finance, which married economic research and market research and encompassed identifying and studying demographic trends, business cycles, consumers’ purchasing power and many, many other trends that empowered him to forecast economic and market changes.

About Us

Economy & Markets Daily is the first e-letter of its kind that uses the power of demographic trends and purchasing power to accurately identify economic and market boom and busts.

We believe that knowing what consumers are going to buy next (purchasing power)... or what they'll stop buying soon... is the best way to protect your investment portfolio, maximize your returns, and make smart business and financial decisions.

Each week day, Harry Dent, Rodney Johnson, and Adam O'Dell share with you their views on demographic trends, their market research, their economic research, the housing market, economic cycles, market cycles, business cycles, and the looming economic collapse and market crash.